


The Fastest Man Alive

by Ma_Kir



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Doomworld, Episode: s02e16 Doomworld, Gen, the spear of destiny
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-20
Updated: 2017-09-20
Packaged: 2018-12-31 20:31:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12140541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ma_Kir/pseuds/Ma_Kir
Summary: Eobard Thawne used the Spear of Destiny for one more than one purpose.





	The Fastest Man Alive

**Author's Note:**

> The Doomworld scenario in Legends of Tomorrow's Season Two always bothered me: if only because Eobard Thawne would *never* allow Damien Darhk to kill or even keep the mask of Barry Allen. You can thank Serenityreview and me reading one of her fics for this particular creation.

The enemy of any time traveler, Speedster or otherwise, is paradox. 

Anyone trying to tell you anything different is trying to sell you something that doesn't exist yet, or was already retroactively erased from existence: which is to say their ill-gotten bag of goodies was never there to begin with.

The rest of my ... allies, as others -- who don't exist the way they once did, that is to say, again, that they were _never_ here -- are creatures with simple comforts. Thievery, great escapes, gratuitous violence, revenge, true immortality, supreme power, and other smaller, petty goals are more their ... speed. There is nothing wrong with any of those goals or achievements, to be fair. I, too, had to resolve the issue of my own continued life. Well, not so much my life, as it is my own continuing existence in the multiverse of the Speed Force.

I died. It's funny to say that, sitting in my chair here as head of S.T.A.R. Labs, respected and venerated by the populace of Central City: if not the world. To be perfectly honest with you, I'm not entirely sure why I'm still in this timeline. I mean, I could go back to my time: in this new reality I created with my ... compatriots. The Spear of Destiny has not only allowed me to live, eliminating the events that led to my untimely erasure due to the maudlin sentiments of my mediocre ancestor, but it has created a new timeline where I am a philanthropic genius bettering this world. I've done more than imagine what my own timeline in the late twenty-second century would be like. They have me in the historical chronicles. My holographs have made me the greatest mind of any age of humanity, and my younger self will grow up in a time without any restraints to finally achieve his true destiny: to become me. Eobard Thawne. The finest of all Thawnes. 

I almost said that I am the Flash of this reality, but well ... that would entail a few things. 

Temporal erasure is a funny thing, although in this case it's not so much erasure as it is ... revising reality. You know, rewriting your own story.

I could never kill him. Well, that's not completely true. Even before I found the Spear, I killed him many times. Sometimes, he even killed me. And I would be lying if I said that paradox never came to bite me in the ass a few times during our encounters throughout space and time. 

I hated him. I hated him so much. You see, Barry Allen never understood that I wanted to be the Flash. I just wanted to be him. Ever since I was a child in the late 2100s, he was my idol: my goal to which I would aspire. I didn't realize it then, either. I didn't understand that I was trapped. We were both trapped in a cage: in the bars that make up the infinitely vibrating subatomic particles that is ultimately the Speed Force. 

You see, I couldn't kill Barry. And he couldn't kill me, even if he were capable: which sometimes he was. Every time one of us would try to stop the other, him from letting me kill his mother, or me from making sure he would lose his powers, the Speed Force always stepped in and put us back in our places.

It was even worse than that, if you really think about it. That day, long ago, when I discovered that my hero -- and that is what he was -- would become my ultimate enemy, that I would never be the Flash, and instead become his foil to greatness, something snapped inside me. It was something I couldn't even name, but I do know that whatever it was, then, I would never, ever get it back. And I tried. I tried to escape destiny. I _ran_ from it. I ran from it faster than any Time Wraith, or twisted Speed Force Servant. I attempted to change my fate. Sometimes I helped Barry. Sometimes I fought alongside of him. Most of the time he never trusted me because the damage was already, retroactively, done. Sometimes I hid myself through a stolen mask, such as the one I developed from poor Harrison Wells. There were times I didn't kill his parents, or I tried to stop myself, but it never ended well. In fact, more often than not it became something of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

And then I became bitter. I won't lie. I was angry at the Speed Force for keeping me from what I thought was my destiny. I was even angrier at my hero for hating me. I was mean, and spiteful. I did more than kill Barry's mother. I hurt him, consistently, in ways that he never thought possible. I made him suffer. I betrayed him. I killed his friends. I made sure his friends and loved ones had never existed. I made him understand, as much as he could, what it was like to be alone.

What it was like to be me. 

Perhaps that is why I felt such an affinity to him, even when I barely knew who he was. 

The inescapable fact is that I made him. And he made me. 

Except ... I found a way. To escape.

I know, it is fairly hypocritical of me to condemn my comrades for wanting the same thing. But escape isn't a game to me. It never was. I found a way to escape the Servant, and the Speed Force. But more than that, more than anything, even after managing to run away from death, from non-existence itself, I have finally gotten away from _him_. 

The truth is, even the Speed Force is not immune to the Spear of Destiny: the creation of a principle that supersedes it. The mask that Damien Darkh has in that gauche collection in his office does belong to the Flash, but it isn't Barry Allen's. And the reason for that is quite simple.

Barry Allen doesn't exist.

He never existed. I used the Spear of Destiny to write him out of the entire multiverse. I purged him. In his absence, the Speed Force found another champion. Perhaps it was Wallace West, or someone else. I don't actually know, nor do I care. Damien took care of him without my help. And to be honest, I'm glad. It's not so much that the other's death was beneath me, which it is, but now I am actually free. 

I'm free of being under him, of being his afterimage, or his shadow. I'm no longer the reverse of something that doesn't exist. In this world, my younger self heard of a man who could move extremely fast and thought he could do better. And he did. He was never important to him. He was never his inspiration or his hero. This other Speedster was just an old ends for the means to become excellence: to achieve true timelessness.

I remember all of it. It's as though I made that story myself. These days, when I think of Barry Allen, it's like remembering an imaginary friend or a fictional antagonist -- an enemy -- that I made up, and ultimately discarded when I achieved greater things. I think of him now as something of a thought-experiment, of the possibility of someone with my abilities and potential who could ever equaled, if not possibly surpassed me. But no such person exists. 

I am the greatest Speedster of all time. Even if the Speed Force still remembers, its pathetic little wraith remains in its prison for my experiments. I won. I truly won. So let my friends have their small victories. Let the people of Central City and the world in all timelines marvel at my accomplishments. Because my greatest victory is simple enough. It is sitting here, in this comfortable chair, behind this desk, waiting on the dissection of the Speed Force's undead slave, amusing myself with the fictional little histories I've made for the so-called Legends of Tomorrow, and knowing that I am finally free of Barry Allen. I am finally free of _wanting_ to be him.

I am finally free of wanting to be the Flash. 


End file.
